The Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC) has issued a first-of-its-kind, fusion-specific byproduct material licence to Type One Energy. This milestone establishes a new regulatory framework for nuclear fusion, clearing the path for the construction and operation of Type One’s Project Infinity at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) former Bull Run fossil plant site in Clinton.
The project will repurpose the retired Bull Run coal site, which was shut down in December 2023. Type One Energy will utilise advanced stellarator technology to build a development campus. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2026, with the Infinity One prototype targeting commissioning in 2029. Full startup of the 400 MWe Infinity Two pilot power plant is projected for 2034.
The project is a collaboration between Type One Energy, TVA, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the University of Tennessee. The licence was developed by TDEC’s Division of Radiological Health after the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) unanimously voted in April 2023 to decouple fusion from traditional fission regulations, classifying fusion systems under the lower-risk “byproduct materials” framework.
Because NRC already had formal “Agreement State” treaties with 40 states, this automatically cleared the path for qualified state radiation control agencies to take the lead in licensing commercial fusion facilities. Following NRC’s regulatory framework blueprint published in early 2026, Tennessee codified its own state-level rules, which went into effect on in June 2026. It is the first US state to have operational rules tailored exactly to fusion machines.
“Issuing this licence is a significant milestone that solidifies Tennessee’s reputation as the global hub for nuclear innovation,” said TDEC Commissioner David Salyers. “We are proud to develop this groundbreaking regulatory framework for fusion energy that will serve as a model for other states.”
Type One relies on advanced stellarator technology, which differs from the more common Tokamak design. While Tokamaks induce a massive electrical current through the plasma itself, making them vulnerable to sudden, violent plasma disruptions, stellarators avoid this by relying entirely on external magnetic coils.
Traditional magnetic systems are symmetrical rings. Stellarators use highly complex, computer-optimised three-dimensional magnetic coils to twist the plasma. Because the plasma is inherently stable without an internal current, stellarators can theoretically run continuously for long periods, rather than in short, pulsed bursts.
Type One Energy’s competitive edge relies on resolving the historical engineering challenges of stellarators (their highly complex 3D shape) in three ways. High-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets are used to generate much stronger magnetic fields, allowing reactors to be significantly more compact. Advanced computational physics and 3D digital engineering are used to perfectly optimise the plasma’s stability before hardware is ever manufactured. Industrial 3D-printing (additive manufacturing) is used to accurately fabricate the complex, twisted non-planar magnetic coils required by the design.
Type One Energy Group was founded in 2019 as an academic spin-out to commercialise stellarator fusion technology. The company bridges lab research and the commercial energy market through its FusionDirect programme, a capital-efficient roadmap aimed at deploying commercial fusion power plants over the next decade.
The company was formed by combining academic expertise from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (a world leader in stellarator research) with talent from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Chief Scientific Officer Dr John Canik was formerly interim director of the Fusion Energy Division at ORNL with over 16 years experience in fusion theory and modelling. Chief Technical Officer Dr Thomas Sunn Pedersen joined in 2023, bringing 30 years of fusion experience, including leading teams for Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X – the world’s largest stellarator. Other staff include Chris Hegna and Dr David Anderson who worked on the Helically Symmetrical Experiment (HSX) at UW-Madison, which was the world’s first optimised stellarator.
In February 2023, the company transitioned from a pure research group into a heavily venture-backed enterprise. Christofer Mowry, who became CEO in 2023, is a veteran energy executive who previously served as the CEO of General Fusion and founded the small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) company Generation mPower.
The pivot to commercial scale was kickstarted by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV). Type One Energy has raised over $133m in private capital to date. The company was among the first to receive funding from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. Type One was selected by DOE as one of eight private fusion companies to share an initial $46m pool of funding to develop commercial fusion pilot plant designs. In January 2025, DOE announced that Type One had successfully completed its early critical-path science and technology milestones under the programme.
Site preparation and construction at Bull Run for Infinity One are scheduled to begin later in 2026. This will be a non-grid-scale stellarator prototype and workforce training centre. It will serve as a testbed to validate Type One’s high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets and 3D-printed coil technology in collaboration with ORNL. It is targeting commissioning and initial plasma startup in 2029.
Infinity Two, a 400 MWe pilot power plant, is in the advanced conceptual design phase, spearheaded by engineering partner AECOM. Type One Energy completed its First Formal Design Review (PDR) for this phase in May 2025. Construction could begin as early as 2028, with full grid integration and utility startup targeted for 2034. The Bull Run Fossil Plant has completed early decommissioning and Type One has already relocated its corporate headquarters to the Greater Knoxville area to manage the site’s transition into a unified fusion development campus.
“For the first time, a fusion power plant-specific licensing process has been developed and then used to grant a fusion-specific license to operate a fusion machine, consistent with a national regulatory framework for fusion energy,” said Type One CEO Christofer Mowry. “The importance of this milestone cannot be overstated. Tennessee’s licensing process is now the international benchmark for how to ensure fusion power plant ‘safety by design’ in a manner that can unlock the compelling economics of this transformational power generation technology.”
